Ep. 349: Sam Altman On Productivity

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cal talks a lot about his ideas for producing meaningful work in a distracted world. But how do other people tackle this goal? To help better under this question, Cal reacts to a 2018 article from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in which he details his productivity philosophy. Cal then answers listener questions and concludes with a dystopian tech corner.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.
0:23.6	So I'm here in my Deep Work H.Q joined, as always, by my producer, Jesse.
0:29.2	But Jesse, I'm going to put out a PSA to our listeners here.
0:32.0	They should, if they have questions they're interested in having be addressed in the show,
0:36.9	submit questions, right?
0:38.1	Correct.
0:38.4	We always need more.
0:39.9	And we tend to age out a question.
0:41.7	So even if we have a lot, the ones we don't get to, they become dated.
0:45.9	So it's always to your advantage as a question asker to submit new and fresh questions.
0:52.6	Shorter, I think, right?
0:53.7	Jesse, tends to be better than long.
0:55.4	Yeah.
0:55.8	If you put the four or five paragraphs, the explanation is harder to do.
0:59.1	The link to submit those questions, where are we seeing people, the deeplife.com slash
1:03.8	listen.
1:04.9	Yeah, there's a link right there.
1:06.5	There's also a link there if you want to submit calls.
1:08.6	You can do it right from your phone or browser. Another sort of shortcut to get into the show because we're always looking for calls as well.
1:14.2	Correct.
1:14.6	We have a limited number there.
1:16.4	So keep your questions and calls and also case studies are entered there as well.
	...

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